DID YOU KNOW? The Feds Will Cut off ALL TV and Radio Broadcasts Nov 9th in the first ever federal test of the Emergency Alert System

Maybe the revolution will not be televised. Is anyone else concerned about the upcoming test, unprecedented in our nation’s history? Is anyone else concerned that you might not have heard about it until just now, and that you haven’t heard any of the mainstream media remarking on the upcoming test? Is anyone else concerned that simply by showing concern myself, I might appear “fringe,” paranoid, or “kooky?”

First the facts: This isn’t a wild conspiracy theory. FEMA, the FCC, and the Department of Homeland Security will be working together on November 9th at 2:00pm EST to simultaneously disrupt all the television and radio broadcasts in the entire country, replacing them with the Emergency Alert System broadcast for three minutes [Change in duration, to a shorter amount of time as of 11/4/11]. While EAS is tested regularly on a state and local level, this is the first-ever nationwide test to be conducted by the feds. You can confirm all these facts on the websites of the FCC and FEMA.

Why should it concern you? I’m not suggesting that Mr. Obama and a group of wild-eyed global puppet masters are sitting around a table smoking stogies and stroking gray cats while cackling about their plan to control the airwaves in America. What I am suggesting is that history shows unequivocally that the centralization of power in the hands of a few is a process that seldom reverses course. Every new precedent, every new power that is exercised by an elite few, is seldom ever given back, and typically forms a foothold for the seizure of more power.

Every time the people of this country have given the Washington regime an inch, it has taken a mile. Study the history of any federal tax, regulation, war, agency, or program (especially the ones that were supposed to be only “temporary”), and then try to deny the historical veracity of this claim. Furthermore, history teaches that not only is radically centralized power seldom devolved and inclined to grow (along an exponential curve), but that it is abused, mismanaged, misused, and wielded in favor of the elite and powerful few who pull its strings, against the interests of the many weak, small, humble, and powerless. So why should we stand for Washington to exercise another unprecedented power?

If my suspicion of people with power seems paranoid to you, let me suggest that your trust of people with power is– in the very strongest sense I can possibly use these words– gullible and naive. If this overarching reason isn’t enough to incite misgivings about the upcoming test, let me share with you three more:

1. It’s illegal. As our republic is constituted, the federal government can only carry out actions that are specifically enumerated in the Constitution. All other actions are reserved to the states and the people. Any act of the federal government that is not specifically enumerated as a legitimate power for it to exercise is illegal. Now please search Articles I and II of the Constitution and tell me just where the power to shut down lines of communication is given to the President of the United States? To use FEMA (which was recently created by executive order) to disrupt the press is not only an overreach of power, but I would go so far as to say a possible violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.

2. It’s immoral. Forcibly (and what does the government ever do that in the end, does not require force as the last resort to make it possible?) taking over so much private infrastructure and disrupting so much private, commercial activity is a violation of the property rights of those who own and hold a stake in that private infrastructure and its unobstructed use. The government does not own your television and it does not own the company that sends information to your television. As I argue above, it has no legal right to appropriate these things for its own purposes, and I’ll state furthermore that it has no moral right to do so. You can’t just use other people’s things. That’s grade school morality that children are taught in kindergarten.

3. It’s impractical. Does anyone really think the test will make America safer? Does anyone actually believe the premise behind it: that the centralized bureaucracy in Washington is capable of effectively responding to sudden national disasters and emergencies? Did FEMA save the day on 9-11, or did local police and firefighters? Ask the victims of Hurricane Katrina who waited for days for FEMA to simply bring them water whether they think FEMA is effective at what it does? Or examine the many number of blunders, missteps, and malfeasances in FEMA’s short history.

And with all of these legitimate concerns and controversies, with all the legal and moral ramifications, with the practical objections, with all the unprecedented historical meaning and implications of such an event as the nationwide disruption of the entire country’s television and radio broadcasts– especially as the nation’s Congress discusses multiple pieces of legislation that would expand Washington’s role in governing the use of the Internet– you would think that this event just might warrant a little more coverage from the national media, a little more controversy, a little more debate!